


unravel

by guttersvoice



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Ultimate Talent Development Plan (Dangan Ronpa), comfort sort of but lbr maki isnt... great at that., friendship (nearly), suicide mentioned not attempted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 05:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15623685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guttersvoice/pseuds/guttersvoice
Summary: the thing about lies is -the thing is, the truth comes out, and spills everywhere.





	unravel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Panta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panta/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Of Love and Trust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15609642) by [Panta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panta/pseuds/Panta). 



> a friend linked me to pantas fic and while ill admit it wasnt really to my taste personally, the way they described the backstory they'd given ouma really struck something in me. reminded me of something. so i wanted to see what i could do with that. 
> 
> wanted to write something soft, where everyone winds up okay, you know?
> 
> this is...... very different to their fic, haha;;; i hope its still good to read anyway.

The thing about a lie, is, no matter how talented you are as constructing them, no matter how many layers of falsehood you wrap yourself in, no matter how much you believe what you’ve said - want to believe it - the truth is still there somewhere, and once one part of it shows, the rest is sure to follow if you’re not careful.

Kokichi is careful.

He’s always so careful, so it’s not fair that this one thing has come out, now. The one thing he only ever really avoided instead of directly lying about, that he side-stepped so carefully.

God, his jaw hurts from grinding his teeth. Pathetic.

His feet swing in the open air. He doesn’t know how high the school is, but it feels high from where he’s sat.

Telling the truth always feels like he’s vomiting. Like it’s spilling out of him. There’s no control, there, no way for him to make sure that people believe what he needs them to believe of him. And this time he just couldn’t stop - couldn’t hold in a single detail, had to physically run away to shut his stupid mouth up, to stop himself from admitting just how dirty, how broken he is.

He’s not quite sure what it was that sent him over that particular edge, today. Well - he knows, but it’s not like Iruma hasn’t called people that plenty before in earshot of him, so it’s not just that.

It’s more in the way that Akamatsu stepped in so gently, to hold Iruma’s hand and remind her that everyone has to work and that it’s a legitimate industry, and that people like that deserve just as much respect as anyone else - that was the issue. And Kaito had looked so lost, and Kaito had laughed a bit - out of awkwardness, more than actual humour, and Kokichi knows that, but he can still hear it echoing around in his head. He knows that Kaito doesn’t want to hurt people. That he’s working on learning how to communicate with people he doesn’t understand. They’ve had long, wandering conversations about it. Kokichi knows that.

But Kaito had laughed. And asked, out of real, honest curiosity, out of genuine concern, if it wasn’t degrading by nature anyway, if it didn’t hurt those who had to take up such work, and something in Kokichi’s head had fizzed and bubbled over and before he’d known it he was running his big, stupid mouth and telling the big, stupid truth.

“Yeah, it hurts,” he’d said, conversationally, in the middle of the classroom, sat cross-legged on top of his desk. And then he’d said so much more, and he hadn’t been able to stop, or keep it just to the things he was okay with saying - as if he was okay with saying any of it - and before he’d known it there had been real tears streaming down his face and he  _ couldn’t stop talking _ \--

So he’d run off, and everyone had been too shocked to come after him right away so he’d made it to the roof of Hope’s Peak without any of them catching him.

Kokichi looks down.

It’s not like he has any intention to jump, or anything. It’s just quiet up here, and the sense of danger he gets with this much air beneath his feet - the knowledge that he could, but won’t - is comforting, in a strange way.

He could - but he won’t.

He could tell the truth, but he so rarely chooses to, and that’s the essence of it, isn’t it. He lost his choice, again, and he hates that and he hates himself for it.

It would be so much easier if he could be angry at Kaito - or Akamatsu, who thinks he should be treated so gently, which is almost worse - or Iruma, who is harmless and fun and always plays along with his games. He’s just angry at himself. Disgusted.

The door behind him opens, and he feels his whole body tense, spine cold. Can’t look round to see who’s found him. Assuming it’s even someone from his class.

He recognises the footsteps - or near-lack of - and feels a thrill of fear spike in his chest.

For all that she so often threatens those around her, he knows Harukawa would never actually attempt any harm against their fellow students. He knows that. But he also knows that if she pushed him it would be easy to frame it with no consequences for herself - he can’t stop thinking of how he might go about it, if their positions were reversed.

He’s outed her - only as an assassin, a filthy murderer, but they both know he could out her further, and he dangles that above her head daily, has made extra sure she knows he knows.

She’s killed people, after all, so people deserve to know - that’s what he told himself. Tells himself. She’s a fair target. She can take it.

If it were him walking up behind her, and she’d done that to him, he’d at least be thinking about it.

“I’m not about to forgive you for any of the things you’ve said or done to me,” she says, and sits down next to him, instead. Her hair trails down off the side of the roof, and he resists the urge to grab it. That’s gotten him punched more than once, and while the pain might be refreshing, it’s probably not such a safe decision all the way up here.

“I’d be disappointed in you if you just magically forgave me because I revealed my tragic backstory,” he laughs. It comes out more a croak, but she keeps her expression unconcerned, eyes fixed on the horizon where the sun is starting to sink. “Besides, I don’t want your pity.” Pity would only make him feel worse. Like he’s delicate, like he’s never been in control of his personal little world. Like he’s a fundamentally good person, which is terrifying.

“I know,” she replies, voice even. “You’ll be getting plenty of that from the others when you go back to the classroom, whether you like it or not.” 

She knows. He wonders just how much she thinks she knows. He doesn’t want to think that anyone could properly understand him.

“It’s hard, when people don’t see you the way you want to be seen, isn’t it?”

It’s kind of nice that she’s still bitter. And he gets it - he took her lie away from her, and that layer of armour fell away and she was left vulnerable, because of him.

Hard to think of someone like her as vulnerable. But the same could be said for himself, he supposes.

“I don’t care how people see me,” he lies, and it comes easy, and it’s comfortable.

“That’s a lie, isn’t it?” She says it just like he does. It makes him laugh, despite himself.

“Nishishi-- what would you know about it?”

She stares at him, and it’s like her eyes are boring right through his skull. He’s used to that, though. It’s how she looks at everybody.

“Your entire schtick is trying to make everyone think you’re a very specific brand of evil, while still being relatively harmless,” she informs him, and - she’s right, but she doesn’t have to call him out quite so directly, geez.

“I am evil,” he complains, petulant and pouting and barely trying to make it sound even the slightest bit true. “And terribly dangerous.”

That’s the other thing about lies - sometimes it’s okay for them to be obvious. Speaking them into the world enough will make them real enough even if no one believes them for a second.

Harukawa just rolls her eyes.

“You did your research on me,” she points out, and he nods, gleeful.

“That’s right, Harukawa-chan, I know eeeeeeeverything about you--”

“No, you don’t,” she says, calm and conversational, and he realises she’s absolutely right. “Anyway, I did a little research of my own, after you told everyone my real talent. Wanted to be ready, if you decided to tell anyone anything else without my permission.”

Something in his stomach sours.

“Your organisation - DICE -” He nods slowly. A deer in the headlights. “I didn’t look too hard into it. You’re entitled to some privacy, at least, even if you don’t extend the same courtesy to others.”

That stings, but it’s not like she’s being unfair.

“The most recent article I could find was about members dressing up as clowns to accompany children fighting abuse cases to court,” Harukawa says, and he understands now that she’s known more about him than he’s ever let anyone at this school know; that she’s known for months, and said nothing.

Does she think that makes her a better person? She’s still a murderer - the defensive argument rises in his throat too-easily, but she speaks again before he can push her away.

“I’d be disqualified from being a member already, of course, but learning that much has made it bearable, when you’re trying to recruit people.”

There’s something strange in the way she says ‘recruit’. Like she’s picking open an old scab.

“Harukawa-chan--” he starts, and she holds up a hand to silence him. Normally, something like that wouldn’t work; he’d laugh around it and keep going, but there’s something in the set of her jaw -- he can’t figure it out, and he’s excellent at reading people, so it makes him feel unsteady and weird. He kicks his feet and closes his mouth.

“I’m going to tell you what I’ve only told Saihara and Momota, now, and you’re going to listen, and understand why I’m the one who came after you and found you.” It’s a statement, not a question. That expression is one of reluctant honesty, and that’s why he couldn’t recognise it. “Akamatsu doesn’t know all the details, only some of it, and - I know I can’t control what you say to other people about me, and I won’t bend to your will just to keep you quiet, but I would appreciate you keeping it to yourself.”

“I’m a liar, not a gossip,” he insists, and her eyes soften, just a tiny bit.

“Could have fooled me.”

He laughs at that. In all fairness, he’s spilled her secrets before, far more readily than his own.

She tells him her story. How she was a child, and the people around her needed money, and so she did what she could, and what her body was capable of, to protect those smaller and weaker than herself. Those she cared about.

He gets it. He gets what she’s saying. He’s glad she opened this conversation by telling him she wouldn’t forgive him, because after learning just how much their ridiculous, over-the-top tragic fucking backstories parallel one another, he almost thinks he ought to forgive her for the unforgivable things he knows she’s done. He doesn’t want to, and he’s grateful to her for making sure he knew he didn’t have to.

“That’s why you’re scared of Angie,” he muses aloud, eventually, after they’ve sat in silence for a little while.

“I’m not--” she begins, and he smiles as wide and bright as he can at her.

“That’s a lie, isn’t it? You get so jumpy every time she gets on a conversion kick.” He’d never figured that one out before, had just assumed she was nervous about being potentially clutched to the bosom of a beautiful young lady, but he’d been wrong, for once.

She sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose tiredly.

“Yeah. Even if she didn’t talk about repenting, and sin, and stuff like that… her recruitment techniques are just like any cult, and - well, I’m sure you can understand, I’m not exactly a fan of those.”

He wouldn’t like cults, either, if he’d been put to work for one, and seen their victims drained of money and life since childhood. It makes sense.

He’d known a lot about her already, but he really thinks he’s starting to understand Harukawa a bit, now.

The thought makes him grimace.

“Ugh, are we  _ friends _ now?” 

“Absolutely not.” She looks alarmed at the very thought, but goes right back to her usual closed-off expression, and he wonders if that was her making a joke. He laughs either way. “No, Ouma, we aren’t friends. You have a long way to go before we can reach that point.”

She doesn’t deny that they could reach that point, though.

“Honestly, I’d have left this job to Amami and Gonta if you weren’t dating Momota.”

This, more than anything else she’s said this entire time, throws him. 

“What --” She’s not supposed to know about that. “I’m not --” It was Kaito’s idea to keep it quiet from Harukawa, so he could ease her into it; make sure she didn’t explode at either of them. “We’re not --” 

She’s just looking at him, lips pursed in a way that means she’s fighting a smile.

“I have eyes, you know,” she points out, and Kokichi is red to his ears. “Also, he was crying when you ran off earlier. Did you guys get together because you bonded over your crushes on Saihara, or--”

“I don’t have a --!!” And that’s not what they’d bonded over. It’s none of Harukawa’s business besides. 

“I have eyes,” she repeats, climbing back onto the roof proper. “Besides, I don’t care. As long as you don’t hurt either of them, it’s none of my business.”

She offers him a hand up, and he takes it more easily than he’s taken anyone’s hand in weeks. Even his boyfriend’s.

“Didn’t you just say I made him cry? Am I in danger?” he jokes as she pulls him to his feet and they both step away from the edge.

She rolls her eyes.

“He deserved it.” Brutal. If there’s one thing he can really admire her for, it’s that. “He made you cry first, so you’re even this time.”

The implication that she’d make sure they were even, either way round, is frighteningly warm. He’s not used to this. She’s supposed to be a cold, intimidating presence whose secrets he knows and can control her with. A looming god of death despite her height, not a person who would make sure his boyfriend isn’t too much of a dick to him.

“Aw, thanks Harumaki!” He forces as much cheer into his voice and his smile and especially the nickname as he can, and is rewarded with her eyes almost glowing as they reflect the sunset when she turns to glare at him.

“You know, I could still push you off,” she growls, and sets off walking back inside rather than making any attempt to hurt Kokichi at all.

That’s better. Much easier to deal with that side of her.

The fact that she only really seems to actively threaten to murder the people she’s willing to call her friends doesn’t even occur to him, not a bit.

(That’s a lie.)


End file.
